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Nuclear Disarmament Groups to Commemorate 60 th Anniversary of Hiroshima, Nagasaki at Los Alamos, Bomb’s Source 7/27/05 More than 140 organizations and 250 NM businesses call for complete nuclear disarmament as required by nuclear nonproliferation treaty ● The day’s events include: A-bomb survivors (hibakusha) to testify, carry letters from Hiroshima and Nagasaki requesting full disarmament; NM civic leaders and businesses to ask Los Alamos community leaders to assist nuclear disarmament efforts: workshops on post-nuclear economics for New Mexico and on nuclear history; thousands of sunflowers and commemorative floating candles to grace event. Contact: Greg Mello or Claire Long, 505-265-1200 Albuquerque and Los Alamos, NM – On August 6, sixty years after the first nuclear attacks, citizens and nongovernmental organizations seeking nuclear disarmament are planning to meet in Los Alamos, where those first weapons were built. More than 140 organizations have endorsed the event, called “Hiroshima 60 Years: It Started Here, Let’s Stop It Here;” many of these groups will be attendance. Updates on event details and endorsing organizations can be found at www.lasg.org; new details are developing daily. Organizers among the allied organizations hope the event will be the largest disarmament gathering in Los Alamos history. The day will begin at 8 am with a traditional sackcloth-and-ashes witness organized by Pax Christi New Mexico (www.paxchristinewmexico.org; meet at Ashley Pond Park). Buddhist groups from Northern New Mexico and California will be joining them. At 10 am, the joint events of the day will begin. (A detailed schedule for the entire day and series of days is available from the Study Group.) At noon, those assembled will walk to the Los Alamos Post Office, where visiting hibakusha will present letters from Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Los Alamos Community leaders, requesting their assistance in worldwide disarmament efforts. Santa Fe city councilors and local business representatives will also be present and make short presentations. Thousands of sunflowers will also be made available to the Los Alamos community. In the afternoon, two workshops will be held (each twice, first at 3:00 pm and then again at 4:30 pm). The workshop on nuclear history will be held in the Los Alamos Community Building (adjacent to the Pond) and will be led by David Krieger and Alice Slater. The workshop on a “post-nuclear” economy for New Mexico will be held in the Los Alamos Senior Citizen Center and will be led by economists William Weida and Michael Oden. At sunset, three thousand reusable floating candle lanterns will be set adrift in Ashley Pond. These lanterns – one for each 100 victims of the bombings – have been produced for this event by the Dragonfly Sanctuary of Madrid, NM. Confirmed musicians for this event include Jim Page (Seattle), Robert Hoyt (Indiana), and Peter Neils (Albuquerque). The day's tone will be nonviolent in word and deed. The groups’ aims are education, awareness, beauty and the display of nonviolent solidarity and power. Events in Los Alamos on August 6 are tied to similar ones in Japan, California, Nevada, Texas, Tennessee, Colorado, and elsewhere around the world. Confirmed speakers now include:
Study Group Director Greg Mello: “No matter what one’s issue may be – health care, poverty, education, or whatever – no serious progress can be made while we as a society embrace weapons of mass destruction. As we enter 21 st century, we badly need to build a political life together based on the dignity of the human person rather than one based on fear, hate, greed, and war.” Mello continued: “The U.S. is now an empire in decline, but the trauma of that decline, and its meaning for ordinary people in the U.S., depends upon our commitment to active nonviolence. We, especially those of us in New Mexico, must embrace nuclear disarmament or we will remain trapped in a spiral of violence of which we ourselves are a primary cause.” *** ENDS *** |
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